Grounding Wires
by slipstream
Summary: Between the blood loss and the post-fight adrenaline crash from hell, all Donnie wants to do is close his eyes and not be for a while, but with a hole the size of New Jersey in what's left of the fan room, most of the lair burned or half-buried in rubble, and Master Splinter still barely able to sit upright, that's not about to happen any time soon. 2k14 movie, 2/5 chapters posted.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: This fic features a reading of 2014!Donatello as being on the autism spectrum. If there are any issues with my depiction please contact me so I can make the necessary changes. Rating is for language and eventual violence. **

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><p><em>I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.<br>I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.  
>I learn by going where I have to go.<em>

_-Theodore Roethke_

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><p>"Donnie..." A voice in the dark, close and quiet enough that it's barely more than a warm puff of breath against his ear slit. "You awake?"<p>

Donatello's fingers twitch against the crumbling foam of their sleeping pad, trying to burrow back into sleep like so much loose sand. The foam is rough against his cheek, almost uncomfortably coarse against the softer skin under his eye, but he likes the way it presses against him everywhere else, firm but flexible and smelling comfortably of must.

"Donnie? _Donnie_! Psst!" A hand brushes against his shoulder, the back of his neck, feather light and cloying. "Wake up."

The touch slips under his shell like ice, turns electric hot as it races down his ribs to curdle under his plastron, deep where he can't scratch. He groans in protest, tries to withdraw to the safety of _in_, but his body doesn't work the way instinct wants it to and there's little room to maneuver with four of them crammed shoulder to shoulder on the mattress.

Sometimes the only way to escape a predator is to confront it.

Especially when that predator is your little brother.

His limbs are stiff from the long day carrying supplies through miles of half-flooded tunnels into this new space—dirty but dry and big enough that their footsteps echo in places—but eventually he manages to push himself up onto his elbows just far enough to turn his head back towards his left. Raphael mumbles something senseless as the foam dips beneath him but doesn't wake.

"Wha'issit, Mikey?" he yawns.

"Hey." Michelangelo hasn't stopped touching him, but he's shifted his grip to the thick denim of his coveralls. That's better, that's okay. "Wanna ask you somethin'."

Donnie settles back down with a sigh. Mikey's never been good at letting a line of thought wait until morning. "Yeah?"

There's a faint rattle of snot as Michelangelo breathes, the ghost of the chest infection that's haunted him for nearly a month now, prompting their move. Even though Donnie knows that it's not a good thing, that it makes Dad's brow crease and Leo bite at his bottom lip until his teeth leave a neat line of dents that don't fade for hours and hours, he kind of likes the sound. Likes the rhythm and static of it.

"Whattaya think of this place?"

Donnie shrugs. It's pitch black in their underground home—they blew out all of the candles before going to bed—but this close Mikey's sure to feel the gesture.

"'S cool, I guess," he mumbles. "Lotsa pipes, an' the big fan..."

Dad had shown them all the fuse box in the corner that they were never, ever supposed to touch. They know about electricity and the little yellow triangles with jagged arrows humans use to remind each other how dangerous it is, and Dad's been careful to emphasize over and over that just because something wasn't working right then didn't mean that it _couldn't_. Donnie had fallen asleep thinking about the wires inside, so much thicker than the ones he finds in radios and old boomboxes, insulation cracked and falling away in places to show the glint of copper underneath.

"Yeah, the fan's kinda cool, it's just— _Hey!_" His tone shifts mid-word, curling in on itself in the way it does when Leonardo scolds him for breaking a rule or Raphael holds something up high where he can't reach. Donatello's brain sketches the accompanying expression across the black of his eyelids: Michelangelo with his brow furrowed, mouth twisted and puckered tight. "You really awake or just pretendin'?"

"Ow!" The well-aimed pinch to the soft skin under the rim of his shell yanks Donnie abruptly out of his half doze. "Stoppit!"

"Shadd_up_," says Raph, annoyance graveled by sleep but loud enough to startle.

"You shut up!" Mikey hisses, shifting under the covers as if to sit up, and now it's Donnie grabbing at _his_ sleeve, pulling him close enough that the edges of their shells clack together.

"_Shhhh!_ You'll wake up Dad!"

There's a sound from the foot of the mattress. Cloth against cloth.

Mikey goes stiff in his arms. They lie together, motionless, listening.

Silence.

Donnie hopes that might be the end of it, but after several minutes Michelangelo starts to fidget again.

"I wish there was a candle," he whispers. Sometimes Dad lets them keep one of the big scented ones burning, cocooning them all in a comforting circle of dim light and the faintly sour bite of citronella oil, but they'll have to be careful with their supplies until Dad finishes scouting their new territory for the best places to scavenge. "It's just—"

He sucks in a shaky breath.

Exhales.

"It's so _big_."

Donatello frowns, remembering Mikey's whoop of delight when Dad first pushed open the heavy metal hatch two days ago, the brutal game of tag that had ensued once they'd all realized the true extent of the space.

"But you liked it plenty earlier."

"Yeah, but—" Mikey shuffles even closer, away from the edge of the mat. "It's _too_ big, y'know? You can't even see the ceiling, some places."

Donnie tries to understand, but he's used to the world outside of his reach being vague and unknowable.

"Dad wouldn't take us here if it wasn't safe."

More rustling. Mikey's nearly on top of him now, the weight of him strangely comfortable despite the awkward angle. It's enough to pull Donnie's mind away from the way his breath tickles across his face and neck. "But what if..."

Cheek to cheek, it's still almost too quiet to hear.

"Donnie, what if Dad's _wrong_?"

If it were Leonardo lying here instead of dead to the world on the far side of Raphael he'd be quick to sooth his brother with hushed assurances that their father is never wrong, that he doesn't make mistakes. Donatello knows better.

"Then we'll _make_ it safe. Okay?"

He expects an argument or at least a couple of rounds of Mikey's infamous strings of "Yeah, but _how_?", but Michelangelo just murmurs "Okay..." and falls silent. Donnie opens his eyes and looks out into the seemingly endless nothingness beyond his brother's shell. Stares until his eyes start to make shapes out of the black, flashing bluepink blotches that twist back on themselves in endless electric rorschachs, many-eyed, teeth sharp.

"Hey." He nudges Mikey with an elbow. "Wanna switch places?"

He does. Donnie scoots over, careful not to kick the warm lump of fur curled protectively around their feet. Mikey is not as considerate. His plastron clatters loudly against Donnie's shell as he scrambles over him, flopping gracelessly onto his own carapace with a grunt in a tangle of covers.

Raph whines at the sudden draft, then yelps as Mikey nails him with a misplaced hand in his attempt to flip over back onto his plastron. Donnie cringes, sure that they've woken Dad by now and braced for the gruff scolding, but their father's tail only sweeps back and forth across the top of the well-worn blankets in three sure strokes, smoothing and tucking them back into place.

He relaxes, shifting to fit his body into the warm space left by his brother. Michelangelo's whispered apology earns him a growl and halfhearted shove from Raphael, but the two quickly settle back into sleep, breaths slowing and deepening into the familiar rhythm Donatello knows so well, soft and warm against the distant, persistent plinking of water against stone.

He lies awake for a long time, thinking about the wires he isn't supposed to touch. How they tangle together before branching out again, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs.

He wonders where they go, once they disappear into the dark.

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><p>Between the blood loss and the post-fight adrenaline crash from hell, all Donnie wants to do is close his eyes and not <em>be<em> for a while, but with a hole the size of New Jersey in what's left of the fan room, most of the lair burned or half-buried in rubble, and Master Splinter still barely able to sit upright, that's not about to happen any time soon.

He has mostly blurred memories of the string of dead-end tunnels and abandoned utility outposts they lived in, one bleeding into another, before Sensei found this place. For most of their lives the lair has been their entire universe, a concrete shell of security carved out of the roots of humanity above. Now that that sanctity has been breached, there can be no rest. Even the five minutes spent grinning like idiots over a grumbling but very much alive Master Splinter while they passed around one of their big jugs of drinking water feels like a luxury that they'll soon regret.

What if they come back?

What if there are more of them? With bigger guns and live rounds instead of tranq darts? They aren't out in the open anymore with plenty of room for bullets to ricochet harmlessly, and Master Splinter lacks the thick plates of bone and keratin that saved them earlier.

What if...

It takes Donatello nearly an hour to reboot their security system and patch all of the priority perimeter sensors back onto the grid. While Michelangelo tends to Master Splinter, Raphael and Leonardo are out in the sewers "making damned sure the coast is fucking clear."

Despite taking minimal surface damage, the electrical in the kitchen is completely dead, so Mikey drags a hotplate over to the console station and commandeers a non-vital socket to make tea.

"Just don't fucking spill it while I'm down here," Donnie snaps from under the primary input station, buried up to his elbows in fried circuit boards and loose cables that snap and spit ominous sparks. His goggles are down in magnification mode, but one of his shoulder cams tracks a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and inserts a grainy pop-up of Mikey's three-fingered "okay" into his optical display.

He's just finished resuscitating the above-ground camera feeds when the main hatch creaks open.

"Aww, no love for the new side door?"

"You mean you ain't blocked it up yet?" Even big as he is, Raphael can move as quietly as any of them, but he drops to the dojo floor with a heavy thud. " Where were you raised, a fuckin' barn?"

Leo climbs in after him, his tread just as heavy with exhaustion. "Stay put, Mikey. We'll get it." Then, to Master Splinter: "No sign of the Foot. No maintenance crews, either. They must not have heard the explosions up top."

"Pssh. Prob'ly thought it was just Raph lettin' one rip, right? They're just used to it, is—_owww_! What the hell, man? That was my blood-suckin' arm."

The kettle comes to a boil, drowning out most of Raph's sputtered reply. Donnie untangles himself just long enough to tug his headphones up over his ears. They're not plugged in to anything right now, but the design of them is just snug enough to pull a thick comforter over the rest of the world. He can still hear his brothers bickering as they drag the welded steel remnants of their couch out of the console room and shift chunks of concrete into a makeshift barricade, but it's muffled under the closed, cupped-in sound of air against his eardrums and the even thump of his own heartbeat.

He keeps working. He's got a rhythm going, can see how four-six-twelve steps ahead if he reroutes a power supply _here_ and sacrifices an HVAC pump _there_ he can get the thermal cams back on, then the first layer of offensive deterrents, then the—

"C'mon, Don." A hand claps around his ankle. "Break time."

It's Leo, he _knows_ it's Leo, and he's not tugging all that hard, isn't even touching skin, but it still comes as a shock. He lashes out, nerves fried, but Leo dodges the kick with practiced ease.

"Sorry." He spreads his hands. "Thought you heard me earlier."

Breathing hard, Donnie yanks up his goggles and jabs a finger towards his headphones. Leo grimaces.

"Sorry," he repeats, tilting his head towards the small clearing in the debris where Mikey has laid out cushions, tea cups, and several cans of room temperature Orange Crush. "Sensei wants us to sit with him for a bit."

Donnie shakes his head reflexively. "In a minute. I just need to re-calibrate the bio profiles and then—"

"Donatello." There's a grunt of pain at the edge of his father's voice, but it's the same tone he uses when Donnie's attention drifts too far during meditation. Precise and faintly sing-song, like the sound his bo makes at the end of an uppercut. "Come and have some tea."

Leonardo smiles at him softly and holds out his hand. At some point he'd pulled his mask down around his throat and splashed water across his face. It hadn't been enough to completely wash away the grime and concrete dust clinging to his skin, and the rest has dried in streaks, grey against mottled green. He looks old, and at the same time very, very young.

Two hours ago they thought Master Splinter was going to _die_.

Donatello lets his brother pull him to his feet.

There's a barely-singed cushion waiting for him in his customary spot between Raph and Mikey. He kneels, bowing his head briefly to his master, who returns the gesture with slow, measured fluidity.

"Coffee's AWOL, bro," Michelangelo shrugs, pressing a steaming cup of tea into his hands. Donatello nods and curls his fingers around the heat, craving the damp warmth fogging his glasses and the delicate familiarity of the chipped but functional porcelain more than the caffeine.

Raphael has an afghan spread out across his lap—an ugly orange and brown one he made before he got any good with a crochet hook. He thrusts the ragged edge of it towards Donnie, frown deepening into a scowl when Donnie makes no move to take it.

Is Raph cold? Donnie's only had time to give the environmental controls a cursory examination, and snow this late in March is not exactly unheard of. They'll be in serious trouble if the heat's busted on top of everything else.

He blinks numbly at the wool lumped on his lap until Raph heaves a ragged sigh, digs out an old army blanket, and tosses it around Donnie's shoulders.

Oh, right.

Battle shock.

Leo comes back from the kitchen with an armful of power bars and beef jerky, making sure everyone takes a double helping. Donnie chews at his mechanically. Even with their accelerated healing rates they'll be anemic for a day or so. Raph had brushed off his earlier attempts to take a closer look at his cracked shell, and Donnie's own thighs and forearms are burning from the strain of trying to hold up the crumbling tower. He's pretty sure he pulled something in his bad left shoulder when they were all dangling in a human and mutant turtle daisy chain fifty stories above Times Square. He wonders what injuries everyone else might be hiding.

The meal settles into something almost like normalcy. Donnie finishes his first cup of tea without really tasting it, but the hot liquid and extra weight of the blanket loosens the thick bands of tension radiating out from under his shell. He smiles around a mouthful of jerky at the wide-eyed look on Leo's face when he tears into his power bar with a little too much force and scatters granola crumbs all down his kasazuri, almost chokes when Raph's snickering morphs into a stream of badly-suppressed cursing when his freshly-cracked can of soda fizzes traitorously down his front. Mikey passes him a second cup of tea, and it's sweet this time, loaded up with enough sugar that there are undissolved crystals ghosting across the bottom. Just the way he likes it.

It's enough, almost, to keep his insides from locking up again when Master Splinter sets down his empty cup and saucer and folds his hands neatly across his lap.

"My sons," he says. "It has been a long and trying day. You have faced an enemy of great cunning and strength. Trained in shadow, you have walked in daylight for the first time and seen the world of humans at its best and at its worst. You have fought bravely for each other, for this family, for strangers and old friends newly met. And though your battles have left their scars, you have come back united and victorious. I cannot repeat how proud I am of each of you, both as your father and as your teacher."

He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. "I wish that I could spare you the burden of this heartbreak. Yet it is the harsh truth that every victory comes with its own losses."

It's harder to read Master Splinter sometimes, with his thick, dark fur and pointed face. Donatello shifts in his seat, glancing at each of his brothers to gauge their reactions. Michelangelo is sitting straighter than usual, mouth puckered and brow ridges tightly furrowed. Leonardo's eyes lock briefly with his as he makes his own scanned survey, but his eldest brother turns quickly away, plump cheeks deeply creased.

Raphael is the easiest, eyes dark and shoulders hunched, arms folded tightly against his plastron.

"We can't stay here, is what you're sayin'." The muscles of his face and neck ripple and clench as he shifts his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. "It ain't safe."

Master Splinter flicks one ear briefly at the interruption but nods in acknowledgement. "It is uncertain that we will be truly safe anywhere. Our enemy has been struck low, but like the hydra we do not know what heads still lurk, ready to rise up and strike. Our home, our very existence, are no longer secrets we alone hold."

Mikey's hand shoots into the air.

"I trust April O'Neil," he says, eyes round and clear. "Not sure about the other guy, but he helped bust us out and he never came down here. Plus I think he's kind of a doofus nobody'd believe? So we should be cool."

"It's not Vern that I'm worried about," Leo frowns. "It's those Foot guys with the cattle prods."

Raph's lips pull back, flashing white, jagged teeth. "Yeah, and they've got us pre-programmed on GPS and a bad habit of not textin' before they come over. So let's get off our butts and _scram_ already."

It's like watching a movie, one of the badly-shot horror ones that Mikey loves. Grainy and stiffly-acted, the faces disconnected from the dialogue, but with a slow, creeping dread bubbling underneath all the same.

Donnie fists his hands tightly in the afghan to keep them from shaking.

Mikey raises his hand again, slowly this time.

"Could we nap first?" he asks. "Dunno about you guys, but I could _really_ go for a nap."

"We all need rest," Leo concedes. "But I don't know if we can afford to linger that long. Donnie? When's the soonest you think we could leave?"

The good thing about Leonardo is that when he asks a question, he almost always is looking for a very literal answer.

"Ten minutes," he says automatically. It isn't as if the theoretical possibility of having to abandon ship hasn't been brought up before. Dad used to make them do drills, when they were very young, and Donatello's crunched the numbers on his own compulsively about once a week since installing the first version of their security system. "Fifteen if you want to be neat about it. But—"

His voice cracks halfway through the word. He swallows, adjusts his glasses, and starts again.

"But it leaves us vulnerable. We'd be taking base essentials only, and then only as much as we can carry. We'd be betting on it being enough to last us until we can find someplace else, restock our food supply, and re-establish basics like sanitation and fresh water."

He slices through the air in front of him with his palm.

"Full reset. If anybody comes for us we'll be on new turf with no warning system and no reserve to see us through even a minor complication."

"Yeesh," says Mikey, sticking out his tongue. "Sounds like a real fun camping trip."

Leo runs his thumb along the long scar down his right cheek, thinking. "We've lived rough and on the run before. We can do it again."

Anger spikes through Donatello, hot and electric. His memories of those times may be softened by time but that doesn't make them pleasant.

"We're kinda bigger than we were when we were _four_, Leonardo. We can't exactly cram into a coffee can and live off apple cores and candy wrappers."

"So what," Raph prods, "you got a better idea?"

Donatello reaches unconsciously for his necklace, pulling and twisting the beads back and forth between his fingertips while he tries to regulate his breathing. Tries to ignore the way Raphael watches him, eyes glittering, the way Leonardo pointedly doesn't.

"We could stay," he says at length. "For a while, at least. We'll have more resources to find and evaluate a new place, and we'll be better prepared to cover our tracks when we do make the move. We can make strategic choices about where we go instead of scrambling to make do in the first spot we hunker down in. In the meantime we salvage whatever equipment we can. We'd still be limited to stuff that can easily be carried, but we can make multiple trips. After the immediate survival gear we prioritize the weapons and security sensors, medical supplies, a few personal items. Maybe a couple of generators, depending on how far we have to go. Things that will be hardest to replace."

There's no way they'll be able to carry most of his carefully-scavenged servers much further than a few blocks. Same with the kitchen appliances and all of their beds, but the servers are going to hurt the most. If he's lucky he might be able to salvage some of the fiber optic cabling after he backs up the most crucial data blocks using his own mobile systems.

Raphael drains the last of his soda with a snort and crushes the can. "You sure it wouldn't be easier to just hunt down the rest of Sacks' goons and kill 'em all?

"_Dude_." Mikey reaches behind Donnie's shell to smack Raph's meaty shoulder with the back of his hand. "Not cool, dude."

Donnie has to duck forward to avoid Raph's own retaliatory shoulder strike. "You're the one who wanted to kill April before you got a good look at her, dipshit."

"Hey," says Leo. "Language."

Raph growls—a less than effective threat, given the afghan—but Leo holds his ground.

"We're having a civil conversation about a serious decision we have to make as a family. One where we're not killing _anyone_ unless we absolutely have to."

"Well last I checked I'm part of this family, too, and I say it's looking more and more like we shoulda killed a lot more of those bastards when we had the chance. And don't give me that look—" Raph points at Donnie. "—like I'm the only one with my hands all dirty. You weren't exactly tapping them politely on the shoulders with your bo."

"I wasn't giving you a _look_," Donnie scowls. "That was battle. This is—"

"War." Whether fighting with blades or fighting with words, Raphael's nostrils flare in excitement each time he draws first blood. "Christ, wake up and smell the sewage, Don! You were the one in the fucking cage. You think they're gonna come down here and treat us sweet when they can make some cash offa us dead as easy as they can alive? This is just the start of it, and it sure as hell ain't gonna stop."

"_Enough_."

Their master's tone commands immediate obedience. They fall into silence, heads bowed.

"Each of you will prepare a pack with whatever necessities for your physical and spiritual health you can carry."

Donatello knows there's nothing logical about the way the embers of his anger blaze bright into panicked betrayal, but the instinct to fortify, to withdraw fully into a hard shell of known safety is too hard to ignore. "Sensei, I—"

Master Splinter stills him with a raised claw. "As a contingency. We must be prepared at all times for immediate flight. However, I agree that to allow the specter of our enemies to chase us blindly from our stronghold into parts unknown when we are able to defend it for a while longer would be tactically unsound. We are weak now, but with careful planning and hard work we will soon be strong again."

Raphael stands abruptly, dragging the afghan with him. He scowls at it, big fingers plucking daintily at the loose loops of yarn tangled in the metal buttons of his loincloth before giving up and tearing it free.

He doesn't look at Donatello as he walks away.

"Don't forget to pack your undies, Mike," he calls over his shoulder. "We ain't commin' back for nothin' once we go."

"Wait, seriously?" Michelangelo's eyes move from their scattering of surfboards to the disco ball before settling on the fridge. He'd been Donnie's partner in crime for that particular escapade and so had intimate knowledge of just how much of a pain it had been to find it in the first place. "I mean not right _away_, jeeze, but even if somebody comes looking for us won't they eventually go away?"

Master Splinter shakes his head, smiling faintly. "A ninja strikes from the shadows and leaves no trace, my son."

Brushing the last of the granola from his lap, Leonardo makes to follow Raphael into the dojo. "I think that's the Boy Scouts, Dad."

The old rat, in his infinite wisdom, shrugs.

"We don't know what all might be used against us, so we can't risk any of it falling into the wrong hands," Donnie explains. DNA plucked from the bristles of a toothbrush. Personality profiles reverse-engineered from notes carelessly scribbled into the margins of their meager library and the junk each of them has crafted into treasures. The possibility of what someone competent enough could make of the guts of his security system is terrifying all on its own.

The logic of it doesn't make it any easier, though.

"Anything we don't take," he forces himself to finish, "we destroy."

"Besides, Mikey..." Leo yanks playfully at his brother's mask tails as he passes, ignoring the yelp of protest to wink at Donnie. "I don't think you want the Foot going through your browser history."

Michelangelo goes pale. Leonardo grins, brighter and fuller than he has in a long time, and lets out a bark of laughter. Master Splinter is alive. _They're_ alive, and so is April O'Neil and all of the people of New York Sacks and the Shredder planned on murdering for the sake of money and power. Whatever wounds the fight has dealt them will heal in time, but until then they'll sleep in their own beds tonight and worry about finding a new place to call home tomorrow.

Donatello tries his best to echo his brother's expression, but it doesn't take.


	2. Chapter 2

"Looks like an... –er fl... –out, Don."

Donatello frowns down at the cracked screen of his phone and keys in an adjustment to the modified transceiver he'd jerry-rigged to it to boost its underground signal capacity. "Repeat that, Leo? You're spotting out."

"The whole place is... " Leonardo's voice fades back into static. He thumps the side of the transceiver irritably and adds 'replace Leo's phone' to the increasingly long mental tally of things to do after the move. "—ater up to our necks."

With a huff of frustration, Donnie yanks the cap off of his red marker with his teeth and draws a large "X" across the old pumping annex under West 36th with more force than is strictly necessary. Leaning back to take in the map as a whole, an undeniable pattern is starting to emerge. "There must be a main busted somewhere. That's everything southeast of the Port Authority flooded."

"It's th... _–ort Authority_, bros." Michelangelo's voice has the tinny, faintly echoed edge of someone shouting to be heard over speakerphone. "What'd you expect? Place... –ithole _above_ ground."

"We're going to try... –ing up 9th Avenue. What've you got between there and Central Park?"

Donnie squints at his list, forcing the doubled letters back into focus. "Two potentials and one unlikely-but-we-still-outta-look-at-it. Texting you the coordinates now."

After three full days of searching Donatello is starting to go cross-eyed from pouring over the labyrinthine details of the New York City municipal water and sewage system. The official plans on file with the city are convoluted enough on their own, but they're not looking for anything that could be turned up by the average construction company filing for digging permits. They've got their own maps of course, revised and expanded with each training run and scavenging mission and forbidden adventure while Master Splinter sleeps, but none of the secret spaces they played in as children are sufficient for their current needs.

That's where the antique blueprints come in—the first a happy accident buried in the bottom of a box of moldy books, the rest originals stolen from the dusty bowels of the public works archives –the ink of the hand-drawn routes so fine and faded that they can't be seen on any of the remaining digitized scans.

The part of him that can spend hours speed-reading the edit histories of Wikipedia articles feels more than a little guilty about the theft.

The much larger part of him that knows how hard it is to feed four growling teenage stomachs on food pantry rejects and the least-rotten contents of restaurant dumpsters and how much _easier_ things get when illicitly-siphoned cryptocurrency is involved is grateful for the moral flexibilities built into ninjitsu.

Donnie's the eyes in the proverbial sky for this operation, sifting and combining multiple data streams into something that makes sense in the physical world. Many sites he's able to rule out through deductive analysis alone—an old sewer reroute under the East Village that got eight feet of water during Superstorm Sandy, an abandoned subway station still accessible and popular enough with taggers that it has its own Instagram tag—but the one's with the most promise are so lost within the bureaucratic cobwebs that they have no way of knowing what they'll find until they go and take a look for themselves.

Mikey, with his badly hidden HGTV addiction, has proven himself an invaluable scout, even if the composition of his real estate photography sometimes straddles the line between conceptualism and deconstructed internet meme . His "exclusive virtual tours" are nauseating to watch, but he's got an organic instinct for spaces that balances nicely with Leo's own more checklist approach. Between the two of them, they're able to assess potential "properties" for both livability and defensibility almost as fast as Donnie can identify them.

"How do five freaking ninjas end up with so much _shit_?"

Raph, for better or worse, packs.

As instructed, the brunt of their food, medical supplies, and weaponry are already packed up and ready for a quick exit, but if everything goes according to plan they should be able to carry a few more loads of supplies to their new home before being forced to scuttle the lair. Despite his grumbling and obvious dis-ease at letting any of his brothers out of his sight for long, Raph turns to his task with his usual brand of brutal efficiency , sorting their possessions by utility, sentimentality, and disposability with the same quick, decisive movements he uses when lashing out with his sais.

He quickly fills the rest of the battered duffels and big Ikea bags they use when scavenging with the rest of their kitchen, the spare components Donnie has set aside to use as the basis for their new security system, and the parts of their library Master Splinter has deemed too important to leave behind. When Leo and Mikey come back for a quick meal and to drop off the first five gigs of surveillance footage and sensor readings, he disappears into the tunnels for a quick trip topside, returning with an armful of emptied-out trash bags ("It was just shredded paper and office crap, Leo, I ain't fucking stupid") for their linens and several grease-stained cardboard boxes for anything else that will fit.

"Hey!" Mikey yelps when Raph dumps his milk crates full of records out onto the floor. "Watch the vinyl, will ya? Shit's vintage."

"You want a mint copy of _Think About It_ or you want to be able to see your fuckin' feet when you go take a piss?" Raph snaps, carefully filling the crate up again with Donnie's lightbulb collection.

"I think you're severely undervaluing Lyn Collins' classic soul stylings and hip-hop legacy," Mikey sniffs, but offers no further protests as Raph sweeps the contents of several color-coded metal baskets into the growing pile of "Wouldn't It Be Nice If We Could."

Donnie wonders if maybe the brunt of the packing shouldn't have fallen to him. Raph certainly doesn't enjoy it, judging by the hard line of his jaw as he digs through their cache of toiletries and the occasional bangs and bursts of swearing from the dojo as he takes apart their training equipment. Most of the things they own Donnie either found himself or helped piece back together. Given nothing but a pencil and a big enough sheet of paper, he could probably diagram out the entire lair wire by wire with a complete annotated catalog of every stray pizza box, faded sticker, and hastily-stashed dirty magazine.

Then again, maybe that's why his palms go slick every time he passes the stacks of packed belongings lined up beside the main hatch. Why he can't look at the wall of stereos without feeling sick.

Why no matter where in the lair he goes, it feels like there are eyes watching him.

"Dibs on the shower," calls Mikey by way of greeting several hours later.

"There is no shower," Donnie reminds him, not bothering to look up from his typing. The pipe carrying pressurized fresh water to the rough concrete alcove Donnie had studded with sprinkler heads was severed by one of the explosions, and they're back to sponge-bathing out of a bucket like they had as kids.

Michelangelo whines piteously but makes a trudging bee-line to the bathroom anyway, peeling out of his soaked gear as he goes. Leonardo isn't far behind, a familiar looming shadow reflected multiple times over across the scattering of dark, fatally wounded monitors. From the smell and the wet squeak of his shoes he doesn't appear to have fared their latest foray into the sewers any better.

"I take it that decommissioned septic facility was a typo?"

"I don't think it was ever formally commissioned," Leo says flatly. "I think it bubbled up like a geyser from the depths of hell."

Donnie wrinkles his nose sympathetically. "Scrub down before you give Master Splinter your report. We don't want him getting an infection."

"No argument there," Leo answers, clipped and professional. His battlefield voice. Donnie expects that to be the end of the conversation, but Leo's silhouette lingers in his peripheral vision. "You should really get some sleep, now that we're back."

They've been resting in shifts since that first exhausted night, making sure there's always someone awake to check in on Master Splinter or raise the alarm if needed. Donnie is way overdue for his turn.

He shakes his head and keeps his eyes fixed on the sluggish scroll of white on black text across the monitors. Between his hasty repair jobs and the heightened demands he's placed on the remaining security systems all of his other programs have been lagging heavily. "Later. I need to finish modifying the city records before the system auto-archives at midnight."

This piques Leo's interest enough that he forgoes his usual lecture on Donnie's poor sleeping habits. "I thought none of the places we were looking at were _in_ the official records."

"Most of them aren't," Donnie explains, "which is part of the problem. If we wipe ourselves completely off the grid then sooner or later we're going to have jackhammers coming through our ceilings and walls to make room for a skyscraper sub-basement or a new branch of the blue line."

"The joys of New York real estate," Leo grumbles. "So what are you turning the final contestants into?"

"Something crucial but low maintenance, too small to stand up in, and very, very, _very_ expensive to dig up, with lots of false leads sprinkled on top." The more subtle alterations he makes to the records the less obvious it is which trail of breadcrumbs leads to their new home. It's known by their enemies that they live underground; Donatello can't change that, but at least he can make them a hell of a lot more complicated to find.

"Good thinking," Leo says, a general once more. "Just... Rest after this. All right?"

Donnie nods jerkily, neck muscles tense in anticipation of a too-soft pat to his shoulder or brotherly flick to the back of his skull, but Leo keeps his distance, watching him work for a few minutes longer before drifting off to the bathroom.

Leo's authority to give orders is still new enough that Donnie doesn't feel guilty for not obeying its full intent. It's hard to lie still for any length of time without the weight of sleep or his tech pack to counterbalance the too-light feeling quivering in his chest, but there's a piece of an idea in his head that won't keep quiet. He turns it over slowly, prodding at its undersides, the jagged edges and empty spaces where other pieces might fit, careful to keep his features soft and breathing even so as not to give himself away to the figures that linger occasionally in the archway.

When it's Donnie's turn to keep watch again he finds himself pacing the perimeter of the lair, dragging his hands along the pipes, the draped arcs of electrical wire, the seams of mortar between concrete blocks.

After his twenty-eighth pass through the ghost of the kitchen he finds his father awake and watching.

"Such a long, troubled journey, my son. Might I walk it with you, for a while?"

He helps Master Splinter to the bathroom and back again, brings him fresh water and dried apple pieces to chew on while he checks his bandages for further bleeding. His sensei is healing nicely.

Donatello's watch ends. He sleeps and dreams of lightning and hushed voices, of small white hands banging frantically against glass.

* * *

><p>There are lots of things he could be doing. <em>Should<em> be doing. Like hacking into the Riker Island surveillance feeds to watch Eric Sack's prison transfer, or trying to find everything he can on the mysterious and still-hospitalized man known only as the Shredder, or scanning April O'Neil's computer for article drafts and every single typed mention of "turtles" and/or "mutant vigilantes." Things that aren't sitting in the octagonal divot in the dojo floor with a growing mountain of scribbled over scrap paper and a mouthful of swollen gums from hours of gritting his teeth in frustration.

He should be able to let this go. He should be able to make this _work_. He should...

He'd tried to explain it to Mikey, once, back when he'd first programmed his tech pack to take automatic readings of each of his brothers' surface temperatures and heart rates.

"It's like I get stuck," he'd said, flipping through each of his goggle's view modes and watching the orange-pink hues of Michelangelo's latest graffiti design shift and bleed from night vision green to heat-sig black to muted tactical browns. "Like there's a circuit looped somewhere and the current's not powering anything but itself. Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Not really," Mikey had admitted. "Whenever I wanna do something I just—" He'd twirled the cans of spray paint through a rapid sequence of jabs and modified nunchaku strikes. "Whap whap bam shi-_kah_! Do it."

Donnie had switched back to thermal view, fascinated by the contrast between the near-black of his brother's plastron and the cool reptilian blue-green of his exposed skin. "Probably why you get in so much trouble."

"Oh definitely," Mikey had laughed, cheeks warming to brilliant gold.

Normally Donatello would use his jumble of monitors to its full display potential to help map himself out of a roadblock, but the main server bank is already starting to buzz and crackle angrily as it struggles to keep up with its heavy workload. He wishes he could take the whole system offline and give it the proper maintenance it so desperately needs, but with the uncertain threat of another Foot invasion running through the entire lair like a slowly building static charge it's a risk he's not willing to take.

Not that it matters all that much, long term. If the system doesn't burn itself out before they leave he'll just have to wipe and junk it anyway.

He yanks at his necklace, the straps of his tech pack, rubs the heels of his hands back and forth along his thighs. His head feels like the inside of a movie projector with the film knocked loose and playing back at the wrong speed, everything crooked and punched through with holes and going too fast to make sense of any of the pictures. He shuffles his papers together, scatters them again, flicks back and forth along the long scroll of the open tabs on his touchscreen. Wishes fretfully for something to take apart, something small enough to cradle in his lap but tangled like a Gordian knot, metal components filmed with grease and studded all over with bolts that resist for a moment before giving under the relentless twisting of his fingers.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, Donatello tries to meditate.

"You're gonna give yourself a serious crick in the neck, sleepin' like that."

Raphael's sudden appearance jerks him out of the light doze he'd drifted into after half an hour of trying valiantly to hold the upright half-lotus Sensei had taught them before curling over into the more natural-feeling child's pose.

"Wasn' sleepin'," he mumbles defensively into the floor. The concrete feels good against his forehead, cool and reassuringly solid.

"Yeah, well, you probably should be, way you've been goin'. Don't want you shortin' out on us."

Donatello is really starting to get sick of all the things he should be doing.

Raphael isn't one to stand around and start conversations for the hell of it, which means that he wants something. With a dejected groan he pushes himself up into a sitting position and scrubs roughly at his face until the tingling sensation of draining blood dissipates.

Raph is close enough that Donnie can just make out the brass button detailing of his spats, but his face is a barely defined blob of color, red bleeding into green and dark holes where his eyes and shades should be. "What's all this?" he asks, gesturing at the fanned blur of papers scattered on the floor around him.

"Rough draft for a new offensive layer to our security perimeter. Interior-activated directed debilitating electrical pulse." Donnie gives his glasses a quick polish with the tails of his mask before slipping them on, but Raph's furrowed expression isn't any easier to read in focus.

"So that's... What? Like a force field?"

"Kind of." He points to a diagram of a fractal network of circuits branching out from a central ring. "Think of it like a big circle. Inside, you flip a switch and it's a safe zone that nobody can push past. Originally I was thinking of tying the switch to an automated sensor, but that would leave it vulnerable to any successful override of the security network as a whole, let alone the higher potential for accidental triggering." Donnie does his best to make everything he builds absolutely Mikey-proof, but sometimes his best just isn't good enough. "So now I'm leaning towards a manual trigger. Easier to build in a fail-safe mode plus it gives us more options to deploy it for pointed tactical maneuvers."

"Makes sense," says Raph, which is the thing he says when something doesn't make sense at all. "What happens outside the circle?"

Donatello has seventeen pages of calculations, twelve journal articles, and four digital simulations at his fingertips he could use to answer that question in exact technical detail, but experience tells him that Raphael is looking for something simpler than that. Something blunter.

"Well," he says, "you die."

Raphael's eyes widen, nostrils flaring as he sucks in a deep, shuddering breath. The rest of him goes very, very still.

"That's the theory, anyway," Donnie huffs, fingers fidgeting idly with the sharp edges of his kusazuri. "I'm still trying to balance out the charge levels in case one of us _does_ accidentally get caught in it. But hey—" He smiles crookedly up at Raph. "—at least thanks to Sacks we know we know we can take kind of a lot, right?"

Raph doesn't smile back. He stares at the jumble of papers for a long minute before turning away, rubbing the back of one hand against his mouth. In the kitchen, Mikey is singing "How Deep Is Your Love" soft and off-key, the chorus intercut with a lot of vocal percussion.

"Look, Donnie, about what I said the other day. I just..."

The sudden change in topic confuses Donatello, as does the rough, tightly coiled quality of his brother's voice. Like a rusted spring stretched slowly apart, the metal crumbling even as it tries to pull back in on itself. He waits for an explanation, brows furrowed and head tilted back, but the rest of Raphael's thought seems to have evaporated into the air.

Raphael swallows, an up-and-down bobbing of his throat, and looks back down at the jumble of papers.

"C'mon," he says, jerking his head towards the main hatch. "I wanna show you something."

"Show me what?" Donnie asks, frown deepening.

"Just..." His hands curl into fists. Open again. "Something. Okay?"

Donnie hesitates, still lost within the conversation. His fingers itch to pull his goggles down, but none of the pattern-seek programs he's written so far have proven effective at deciphering this particular kind of puzzle, so he defaults to his training.

He examines every part of his opponent—the awkward hovering of his hands, the hunch of his shoulders, his bared lower incisors, the way the light pools in the white corners of his eyes—and tries to piece together his intent. His next move. It's easier in the dojo, where each motion and strike is repeated a thousand times until even his brothers' movements feel like a part of his own body, hard-wired into his muscles and waiting for him to unscrew the protective plating for a closer look, but sometimes it works for this.

Michelangelo's face—younger, eight maybe—his hands clenched in front of him and shaking, down on his knees before their sensei, round eyes locked on the long metal swords that they have not yet been allowed to touch.

"_Please_," he says. Implores. "_Please please pleeease..."_

With a sigh, Donatello gets to his feet, knees and ankles popping alarmingly as he straightens his legs.

Raphael leads him through the sewers to the access pipe that runs down to the oversized storm drains meant to keep the subway lines from flooding after prolonged periods of heavy rains. Between the frequently unpredictable water levels and too-close surface proximity they usually avoid the storm culverts altogether, but the wide, mostly-flat tunnel is dry and empty for now.

Empty, that is, except for...

Donnie flips on one of his headlamps to make sure his brain isn't just making pictures out of shadows and water stains.

"It's a _van_," he says, stunned.

"It's a van," Raph deadpans. "Ten points to Gryffindor."

While this particular tunnel branches off from a culvert with easy surface access and completely ineffective security fencing, none of the skateboarders who like to drink and carve lazy arcs down the smooth concrete have ever pushed much further than the first bend, the smell and the dark enough to make them turn back towards the surface. Even the occasional groups of homeless people who use the culvert as shelter typically stick close to the mouth of the tunnel until a rainstorm forces them out again.

Which doesn't mean that a human _couldn't_ have had a good reason to try to hide a vehicle by driving it so deep underground, it's just that the far more likely alternative is standing two feet behind him .

"You _stole_ a van." Donatello does a double-take at the all-too familiar logo. "From _Sacks Industries_."

Raphael's reflected smile seems to fill the driver's side window. "Figured they owed us one," he laughs.

The van is white. Boxy—a cab over model, either a Dodge or a Mitsubishi—with round, bug-like headlights and hard lines running parallel down the length of its body.

It's _beautiful_.

It's also very badly parked, both side view mirrors missing and the right rear tire stuck high enough up the steep curve of the tunnel's edge that the rest of the vehicle tilts at an ominous angle. Donnie approaches the van cautiously, still too dumbfounded by the incongruity of it all to even pull down his goggles for a better look.

"What happened here?" he asks, touching the long scrape down the driver's side, yellow paint streaked across the exposed aluminum. The left front tire, on closer inspection, is completely blown.

Raph shifts his weight from one foot to the other, grin fading. "I ain't ever driven before, a'ight?"

The van is unlocked. Donnie opens the door and peers inside. "What happened to the _driver's_ seat?"

Raphael scowls but remains silent. Glancing over his shoulder, Donatello takes in the hard lines of his massive arms crossed tightly over his plastron, the way the top curve of his shell looms larger than ever when he hunches over, and works through a quick bit of applied spatial geometry.

He gets the picture. That part of it, at least.

"I don't understand." He runs his thumb along the edge of the door, eyes darting from the dashboard to Raph and back again. Fully automatic, decent mileage. Shitty factory model stereo system. "Why would you—?"

"S'just..." Raph says haltingly. "Mikey told me how much of a pain it was getting the fridge, and I heard Sensei talkin' with Leo about... But _I _sure as hell ain't carrying your computer shit no six fuckin' miles, so I thought—"

The metal doorframe creaks under Donnie's fingers. Dimly, he's aware of his fingernails slicing long curves into the rubber door seal. "This is to help us _move_?"

The skin just under Raphael's mask flushes dark green. "Basically."

Donnie closes the door. Opens it again. Breathes in the sickly mix of pine air freshener and musty upholstery while his head spins with the possibilities.

"Did you check it for trackers?"

Raphael throws up his hands.

"_It's a catering van, Donnie!_" He sounds like he's not sure if he wants to hug him or hit him. After fifteen years living together, Donnie knows the tone well. "They used it to bring in subs and fancy cakes and shit."

Donnie spends almost an hour pulling out panels and scanning every inch of the undercarriage with his goggles before he's satisfied that the van isn't bugged. Raph grumbles through the entire process but complies immediately when Donnie asks him to lift the van high enough for him to slide underneath and check the last few shadowy pockets of machinery by hand.

"What's the verdict?" he asks once Donnie slips free.

He tugs his goggles back up to resting position and straightens his glasses. "Well the good news is that Sacks isn't as paranoid as I am. The bad news is that the suspension is shot and there's no spare."

"Oh you gotta be fuckin'—" He drops the van. "_Shit_. Shit shit _shit_. I didn't mean to snag you a lemon."

Donatello wipes his hands on his leather underskirt.

"I can fix the suspension," he muses. "Shouldn't take too long. Probably needs reinforcing anyway, between the weight of at least one of us and whatever we're gonna haul. And we've got those tires under the side table by the couch."

Raphael shakes his head. "Not anymore. They got shredded in the blast." He pauses, thinking. "What about those big tractor ones from the weight set? Think those could work?"

Something in his expression reminds Donatello of the way they all used to look up at Master Splinter when they were first learning their katas, the queasy anticipation as they braced for correction or approval.

He runs one hand along the curve of the engine's air intake, fingers tingling as he traces the rim of one headlight. Licks his lips.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, that might work."


End file.
